Chicago Classical Review

It’s not often that the disciplines of music and architecture are discussed meaningfully in the same breath. The maxim “writing about music is like dancing about architecture” is often aimed as a dig at music writing, but one can imagine that, to the iconoclastic 20th-century architect Bruce Goff, the phrase would read more like a credo.

The multidisciplinary architect is the subject of a fascinating retrospective at the Art Institute of Chicago titled Bruce Goff: Material Worlds. He was also the focal point of an equally compelling program presented by Third Coast Percussion at the Art Institute’s Rubloff Auditorium on Thursday evening.

Goff (1904-82) is best known today as the patron saint of the “organicist” movement of architecture. Though a philosophical descendant and mentee of Frank Lloyd Wright, he eschewed the clean lines and minimalism of the modern zeitgeist in favor of curvilinear, often abstract designs. His attraction to non-traditional materials was also a calling card; shag carpet was a favorite interior element, as were glass cullet, turkey feathers, and tumbleweed.

The architect’s imaginative, often daring aesthetic extended to other media, including painting and composing.

Goff wrote almost exclusively untitled works for player piano, the hybrid mechanical instrument that played paper “piano rolls” much in the same manner of a music box. Goff would compose straight into these piano rolls, painstakingly carving out each note with a hobby knife. This unusual method capitalized on the instrument’s mechanical properties to create works that exceed technical constraints of two five-fingered hands, and are consequently often wildly virtuosic.

Virtuosity and imagination were similarly called for in Third Coast Percussion’s transcriptions of these works — qualities that the venerable Chicago ensemble has in spades. The quartet first presented a selection of the architect’s compositions in 2014, on site in the Goff-designed Sam and Ruth Van Sickle Ford House in Aurora, Illinois — the first time any of it had been performed live.

For Thursday night’s concert, Third Coast arranged the remainder of Goff’s known player piano composition and expanded the repertoire with their own contributions. The succinct program was divided into three parts, with the outer segments comprising Third Coast’s own arrangements of his works, to which the ensemble assigned descriptive titles like “Walking on Eggshells” and “Clean, Precise, Unpredictable.” The interior third centered on original compositions by Third Coast’s members that riff on Goff’s music or expand incomplete sketches into full-fledged works. These were heard here in their world premieres.

In virtually every way, percussion ensemble is the ideal medium for realizing compositions intended to be performed by a machine. Goff’s compositions are often rhythmically propulsive, mercurial, and harmonically and rhythmically dense —qualities that find clarity and expressiveness in the sharp attack and fast decay of marimbas and xylophones. Rippling glissandi, more gestural than harmonic, are rendered elegantly by the sweep of a soft mallet across the instrument’s keyboard. 

Third Coast Percussion proved similarly well-equipped emissaries for this music, bringing sensitivity and human depth to the program’s conception and performance alike. Most arrangements on the program centered on mallet percussion instruments — xylophone, marimba, vibraphone, and glockenspiel — and took straightforward yet faithful retoolings, not complicating Goff’s already-knotty miniatures with overly clever orchestration.

Scattered shots of densely clustered harmonies open up to pleasantly consonant themes, lingering long enough to settle gently into stasis before dive-bombing back into chaos. Open fifths and pentatonicism are recurring themes, perhaps a nod to Goff’s affinity for Japanese art that manifested through his architectural designs and personal collections alike.

Goff’s sui generis approach to music composition is most evident in these works’ asymmetrical form. Their abstraction is entirely consistent with the curvilinear, often improbable buildings he designed: organic, sometimes bordering on alien, but beautifully shaped and abiding by an internal logic that is more so felt than understood. Through every turn, Third Coast was up to the task, delivering the fiendishly difficult scores with aplomb and bringing interpretive lucidity through sensitively placed dynamics.

The quartet was equally on point in the performance of their variations on Goff’s themes, though these selections were somewhat less effective. Where Goff’s piano rolls have a bespoke quality, with no two moments sounding much alike, Third Coast’s reinterpretations trended toward symmetry, regular forms, and motivic development. Fine qualities, to be sure, and effective showcases of the player’s virtuosity, but sharing more DNA with other contemporary percussion literature than with the source material.

There was also a missed opportunity to capitalize on Goff’s penchant for unusual materials in his architectural designs. Contemporary classical percussion often takes a similarly experimental method to its selection of noise-markers, but Third Coast’s arrangements largely steered clear of this tactic in favor of keyboard-based mallet instruments, toms and the occasional sprinkle or ratchet or melodica.

Still, one of the program’s highlights came from “Tapestry,” a composition by ensemble member Peter Martin. The contemplative piece, anchoring the middle of the program, deployed the hollow, gentle timbres of bowed marimba and xylophone that suggested Goff’s ethereal beauty, a less often-discussed trait of his oeuvre.

Third Coast Percussion, with their characteristically inquisitive and personal touch, has a deep respect for and understanding of their subject, and this program is as worthy of revisiting as the rest of Goff’s expansive and colorful portfolio.

Third Coast Percussion’s Chicago season continues with a performance in Merit School of Music’s Nova Linea series on February 25. thirdcoastpercussion.com

Bruce Goff: Material Worlds is on view at the Art Institute of Chicago through March 29. artic.edu

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